1 72 EYE SPY 
the Baltimore oriole suspends its deep swinging 
hammock, as well as the plentiful meshing of 
horse -hair woven through the body of the nest. 
The nest of the orchard oriole is even more re- 
markable as a piece of woven texture. Wilson, 
the ornithologist, by careful unravelling of a grass 
strand from one of these nests, found it to have 
been passed through the fabric and returned 
thirty-four times, the strand itself being only thir- 
teen inches long, a fact which prompted an old 
lady friend of his to ask " whether it would be 
possible to teach the birds to darn stockings." 
The horse-hair in the nest of the hang-bird gives 
it a wonderful compact strength, capable of sus- 
taining a hundred times the weight of the bird. 
Upon unravelling one, I found it intermeshed 
fourteen times in the length of ten inches, which 
would probably have given a total number of forty 
passes in the full length of the hair. No one 
wall question the sagacity which such materials 
imply; but what is to be said of a bird that se- 
lects caterpillar-skins as a conspicuous adornment 
for her domicile ? And here is a vireo's nest 
with a part of a toad-skin prominently displayed 
on its exterior, or perhaps a specimen such as I 
have previously described abundantly covered 
with snake -skins. These, of course, are whims 
pure and simple. 
In the linings of many nests we find an equal 
